Have reservations for Ruth’s Chris in Tampa tonight. My friend canceled, anyone else up for going?

Recently when flying I have been doing nearly anything I could to get on a Song flight. With Northwest Airline miles, I can fly on Delta (parent company of Song) company planes and still earn miles.

Song airline was considered a “discount” carrier, but had the best service I’ve ever had on a plane. They gave you FOR FREE headphones for the flight. They even served Panera products and had a very extensive menu for an airflight. Every seat has a touchscreen tv with DirectTv, movies, free mp3’s, video games, and even a trivia game you play with others on the plane to see who gets the highest score. Man I love that game. I totally 0wn3d the guy in 13B.

Well looks like they are being absorbed back into Delta [read details].

This puzzles me somewhat.

In the interim, Delta plans to include first-class service on Song’s 48 planes in an attempt to make the flights more attractive to business travelers

Okay I understand that part, but what about this:

The financially-strapped parent company also plans to convert an additional 50-plus Delta aircraft to two-class Song service and expand in-flight entertainment on Song flights

.

They are spending money and including MORE services on Song flights until the close down flights in May 2006? Strange, seems sort of counterintuitive. Oh well.

Maybe I can get one more flight out of them before they close. I’m flying NWA to the expo, so need to plan a trip before May 2006. Got any suggestions for destinations that I haven’t been to yet?

Good morning,

This is a general announcement for everyone following the current Flickr / FlickrLicio.us issue. As of 1pm EST today, FlickrLicio.us and ALL of its subdomains will be 100% ad free.

Flickr inserts ads in their site for non-paying members. They are making money off of YOUR pictures. The more popular, the more likely they will make money. Yet they are blocking the content they host from sites which have ads. (Read here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here for details about Flickr using ads on their sites. Even Om Malik who said, ” Babes of Flickr, Take That PlayBoy”
commented about Flickr.

So how about this Flickr, as of 1pm EST today there will be no ads on the site; however, if you would allow simple Google ads, which you have used on your site up until recently when Yahoo contextual ads seem to of taken over, it would be seen a king gesture.

The site is and will never be a commercial venture, simply a person blogging content they find on Flickr to be visually appealing. It is just like ANY weblog that would have Google ads on it (if you allow this).

This covers Stewart’s issue 1: (1) Flicklicious is a business.

Issue 2: (2) Each Flickrlicious page served ~2-4MB of photos from Flickr.

This can be easily solved. Simply tell me specifically how many pictures maximum you want on the main page. Currently there were 32. What is an acceptable number?

FlickrLicio.us would even be willing to cache the photos on its own server, using FlickrLicio.us’ bandwidth for hosting of the photos; however there is the issue of copyright that would come into play. If you know of a solution to this the site can COMPLETELY operate free of Flickr bandwidth.

Finally, you have stated that the content is not the issue, yet you don’t wish this content related to Flickr. I find this issue a bit difficult to understand, as that YOU are hosting this content. You are the one serving it up to anyone who comes along and finds it on the site. This content IS associated with your site, as well as all of the other content you serve up. Unless you want to block or prevent people from uploading these types of pictures, you will be in an association with these types of content.

FlickrLicio.us is NOT a business; it is a personal weblog, ie blog, nothing more. At FlickrLicio.us we truly believe in the content, and could care less about financial gain.

Content is king.

Can Flickr remove the block on the site now? We have complied 100% with your issues.

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What is Web2.o? There is certainly a lot of buzz on the internet about it.

Wikipedia.org describes it as, “Proponents of the Web 2.0 approach believe that Web usage is increasingly oriented toward interaction and rudimentary social networks…”
Dale Dougherty coined the term “Web 2.0. He gave examples — “DoubleClick was Web 1.0; Google AdSense is Web 2.0. Ofoto is Web 1.0; Flickr is Web 2.0.”

So you would think.

Ludicorp is the company that developed Flickr which was purchased by Yahoo back on March 20th, 2005. Stewart Butterfield the President of Ludicorp moved down to California and became a Yahoo employee.

On the website Corante.com Stewart posted an essay on Social Networking (a portion of Web2.0). One would think that he is a proponent of social networking.

Wikipedia.org defines a social network as, “a map of the relationships between individuals, indicating the ways in which they are connected through various social familiarities ranging from casual acquaintance to close familial bonds.”

The entire social network allows for multiple degrees of separation, yet still being connected as a whole.

This leads me to where I am at now. FlickrLicio.us, a website that I started and after talking with the owner, this post will be cross posted over there, has seemingly been blocked by Flickr/Yahoo. The site operates on the basis that Flickr “makes it possible to post images hosted on Flickr to outside websites. This use is accepted (and even encouraged!). However, pages on other websites which display images hosted on flickr.com must provide a link back to Flickr from each photo to its photo page on Flickr.” - Per the Flickr TOS.

The nature of the site is and shouldn’t be the matter at hand. The site operates under full compliance of the Flickr TOS. I have personally emailed with Butterfield and Heather Champ about the site. Heather asked me to remove any posts that contain links back to the pictures hosted on Flickr if the owner of the photo asks me to do so.

I and the current owner, have complied with every single request that has come in to remove a post that someone requests be removed.

WHY? Because they think social networking and the Web 2.0 doesn’t apply to everyone? Doesn’t that statement go against everything the social engineering movement is trying to move towards? Censorship based on personal opinion?

What the site is trying to do is the same thing that any person might want. Combing thru to find the content geared to a specific audience. On Flickr there are (and I am not aware of the exact numbers) but seemingly thousands of pictures posted daily to the site. If you wanted only photos of houses you could search for under the tag “houses” on Flickr, but you certainly won’t find all of the results.

FlickrLicio.us does the grunt work for you. The site searches all of the popular tags for the specific content a viewer might want based on FlickrLicio.us’ specific genre the site caters to. FlickrLicio.us doesn’t stop there. The site also browses hundreds of photo groups as well as specific members photo pages that it as accumulated as having content geared to it’s genre.

It is a tool for public consumption of a specific genre of content hosted on Flickr. So why shut down a tool? Would they shut down a site that combs thru for pictures of houses?

How about sites that do EXACTLY the same thing as FlickrLicio.us? Wouldn’t Flickr want to block them from displaying pictures as well? They aren’t though. WHY FLICKRLICIO.US?

For evidence of this check FlickrBabes, FlickrChicks, FlickrBooty, and ChicksnBreasts. They all still have photos displayed on their sites. They provide the same service as FlickrLicio.us does, but have not mastered the precision and are not covering a scope as wide as FlickrLicio.us is.

With all of the subdomains on FlickrLicio.us, there have been over 15,000 photos displayed, which the competition cannot even come close to matching, and FlickrLicio.us wasn’t first to the plate on this. FlickrLicio.us is simply the best service for finding pictures of this specific genre from Flickr on the entire internet.

Outrage? Of course. Why would they choose to target the site? This site and it’s method was a labor of love so to say of mine. I noticed a need and I filled it.

Copyright is controlled by the poster of the picture. If they delete the photo from Flickr, it’s not on FlickrLicio.us. If they contact FlickrLicio.us, they remove the post. The picture NEVER is copied off of Flickr. They are simply hyperlinked via Flickr’s “Blog This” service….which as previously mentioned…they encourage.

Okay so what about Non-Comercial uses? Are there ads on FlickrLicio.us? Yep! Are there ads on every other site that offers the same type service? YEP! Does nearly every single blog out there that posts pictures from Flickr have at least some Google Ads? YEP! Are they going to go after every single person who is posting Flickr pictures that has ads on it? It would be impossible.

FlickrLicio.us has NEVER made a single cent in profit. The ads that are on the site have not yielded a single cent in a check or deposit for the owner of the site. How can it be a commercial site if it hasn’t made a single cent, and isn’t selling anything from the site?

Censorship seems to be the card that is being played. Isn’t the internet about everyone having a voice and being able to express them however they want to?

Do you think Google will simply shut down access to it’s Google Maps simply because someone is using it in a way they don’t necessarily agree with? I am sorry, but I never read anywhere in the API that if they don’t like it then they will shut your access down.

Companies publish API’s to get other people to develop it in ways they would of never thought of. Why shut these guys down when it in a way that morally they might not agree with? Why not shut down ALL of the sites doing this, not just one?

The owner of the site has sent emails to Stewart and Heather as well as Caterina Fake (VP Marketing & Community at Ludicorp) addressing the concerns it has. There has not been any reply to a single piece of communication.

So why is Flickr saying they want Web 2.0 and social networking, but shutting down access to people who try to socially network with them?

If you don’t agree with censorship, and have something to say about Flickr/Yahoo’s double standard please comment or send feedback to the following (Please keep in mind that the content shouldn’t be the issue. Censorship in any form on the internet is wrong.):

Stewart Butterfield:
Website: http://www.sylloge.com
Flickr photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stewart/

Heather Champ:

Caterina Fake:

For Ludicorp Press Enquiries
Amy Bessette
Phone: 415-321-1873

WASHINGTON — Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination to be a Supreme Court justice Thursday in the face of stiff opposition and mounting criticism about her qualifications.

Read more…

Well this might explain why Flickr was dog slow, to the point of not even working today. They upgraded (but are still in beta).

Finally I can recommend this service to my parents who love printing pictures from online. Let’s try to recap what they did.

You can make backups of your photos on DVD or slideshows.

Design your own US Stamps (more features to come ie. apparel, cards, etc.).

Print books and posters direct from your Flickr photos.

So looks like with Flickr you can “Do More.”